An 84-year-old woman has won $115,000 from TransLink after she fell and broke her hip because a driver took off too quickly on the 99 B-line bus.

The South Coast BC Transportation Authority initially offered the woman $1, saying she was at fault, and it rejected a pre-trial $75,000 settlement offer, her lawyer John Cameron said.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Power said in a ruling Tuesday that the octogenarian, Yin Kung Wong, was a more credible witness than the driver.

“We are very happy,” said her son, Samson Wong.

“It wasn’t right that they only offered her $1 and treated her like she was a criminal. I’m very proud she stood up to them and the judge made a really good decision.”

Wong fell and broke her hip on Aug. 31, 2009, when she was 81, and sued TransLink, the Coast Mountain Bus Company Ltd. and driver Kristopher Pinnell.

The firm and driver denied anything abrupt or unexpected occurred and said Wong had only herself to blame.

Described as looking much younger than her age, the woman and her 95-year-old husband, Robert Tang, both testified with the aid of a Cantonese translator and disputed the driver’s version of events.

“It’s amazing,” said Cameron. “Normally, my experience with Chinese people of this generation is that they rarely fight back against authority.”

The couple said Wong was an experienced bus rider who usually took transit three times a week and had never experienced a similar spill.

On the day of the fall, Wong was coming from Richmond, where she had dim sum with her husband and her younger sister. They had taken the Canada Line and exited at City Hall.

They crossed the street and boarded a double-length bus.

She described the bus as being quite empty, with about 20 people on the bus.

Once her husband was seated, Wong took his ticket to get it stamped. She and her sister had passes.

Wong turned to return to her husband when, without warning, the driver abruptly pulled into traffic and she fell.

Various passengers called out to the driver to stop.

As a result of the braking, Wong slid forward to the front of the bus near the fare box.

Driver Pinnell, who had been with the company since April 2007, testified that nothing out of the ordinary occurred until he heard a “thud” and saw Wong on the floor. But Justice Power said that “in assessing Mr. Pinnell’s evidence, there are numerous internal inconsistencies that arose at trial in direct and cross-examination, and inconsistencies between the trial evidence and what Mr. Pinnell recorded in the incident report. While some inconsistencies in an incident such as this can be expected, there are so many inconsistencies present that I cannot place a great deal of weight on Mr. Pinnell’s evidence.”

She said it “is my view that (Wong’s) version of the incident accords with common sense and with the preponderance of the probabilities evident from the evidence at trial.

“In all of the circumstances of the case at bar, I am of the view that Mr. Pinnell breached the standard of care of a reasonably prudent bus driver by entering traffic without warning Ms. Wong ... and without doing an adequate visual check to ensure that Ms. Wong had returned to her seat or was securely standing.”

Justice Power, nevertheless, said Wong should have taken more care and held onto one of the many bars and seat-holds available.

“I find it probable that holding onto something would have prevented the fall or reduced the injury,” the judge said, finding her 25-per-cent responsible for her injury.

Wong, who has since moved into the Icelandic Care Home, now walks with a cane and her prognosis is good, although she may have some pain in the fracture site from time to time.

Discounting the award 25 per cent for contributory negligence, Justice Power awarded Wong a total of $114,607.80.

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